List of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in The San Fernando Valley - Tower of Pallets

Tower of Pallets

One of the more unusual items to receive Historic-Cultural Monument status was a tower of 2,000 wooden beer pallets, designated as HCM #184 in 1978. In 1951, Daniel Van Meter built the tower at his property on Magnolia Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, using beer pallets discarded by a nearby Schlitz brewery. Van Meter, who had been convicted in the 1940s under the Subversive Organizations Registration Act and served time in San Quentin, stacked the pallets in concentric circles until he had built a 22-foot (6.7 m) high cone-shaped tower with a winding staircase around the outside. When fire inspectors sought to have the pile demolished as a fire hazard in 1977, Van Meter appealed to the Cultural Heritage Commission, arguing that the tower surrounded a "Tree of Heaven" and the 1869 grave of a Native American child. One Commissioner recalled that Van Meter was "a character," and his tower, which had goats climbing on it, was "a scream." Another commissioner, noted architecture writer Robert Winter recalled that recognizing the stack of crumbling, termite-infested Schlitz beer pallets was "the funniest thing we ever did" and suggested, "Maybe we were drunk."

After Van Meter died in 2000, the pile became the subject of both pride and ridicule. In 2001, columnist Patt Morrison offered the "unforgettable 22-foot-high tower of wooden beer pallets" as a symbol of the Valley's proposed secession movement. The Los Angeles Times in 2002 derided the tower: "France can boast of the Eiffel Tower, New York has the Empire State Building, and Sherman Oaks has the Tower of Wooden Pallets." In 2005, Van Meter's heirs sought permission to demolish the tower and develop the site, then valued at $7 million. Van Meter's relatives rejected the contention that the tower was art, instead describing the pile as "a rotting vestige of one man's egotism" that festers "like a sore on the community's body." When no influential preservationists or art scholars came forward to defend the pallets, the Commission allowed the removal of the pallets, and an apartment building was built in its place.